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Rest of the weeks theatre

Flesh WoundTheatre Upstairs, Royal CourtWelcome back to the high-rise, high-risk life in London’s 1960s peeling and cracking tower blocks. Ché Walker’s scorching play is about crime and its price. Crime pays, but it can also pay you back. Tamzin Outhwaite, tense as a stretched bow, eyes cold as steel, plays Deirdra, who lives alone: she has had enough of her extended family’s life of crime. Enter Joseph (Michael Attwell), fifties, massive, calmly menacing: he says he’s her mother’s first husband and is looking for their son Vincent (Andrew Tiernan), who is in big trouble with the dreaded Calderazzo family. Vincent is an advanced sociopath: suspicion and danger make him very ugly, and it is not clear whose side Joseph is on. Walker’s writing is all whiplash menace, but he also captures the sanctimonious sentimentality of the godfather culture with acid precision. Joseph was involved, in some shady way,